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SALT LAKE CITY — With the potential for flooding dissipating, local governments are working on plans to "mitigate the mitigation."
With snowpack depths at near record levels this spring, thousands of sandbags were put in place along waterways all over the Wasatch Front in preparation for possible flooding. Fortunately, much of the flooding danger has passed with relatively minimal damage.
But what happens now with all those thousands of sandbags? Municipalities and counties are turning their efforts to getting rid of all those sandbags in a responsible manner.
"With the sandbags that are out there now … we're working on a plan to clean (them) up and take them off the creeks," said Scott Baird, director of the Salt Lake County division of engineering and flood control. However, some of the creeks are still running pretty high in some areas, he noted, and the runoff is still going on.
"It's not like those sandbags have to be cleaned up tomorrow, so we don’t mind if they stay out there a few more weeks," he said.
Baird said he will meet with local municipalities next week to devise a cooperative plan for removing the sandbags. He said the excess sandbags will be transported to the county's Welby Pit facility located at 9780 S. 5200 West in South Jordan.
"We plan on … seeing what help we can get as far as a collaborative effort partnering with the cities and the possibility of doing one last big volunteer event to get those sandbags," Baird said.
He explained that hauling the sandbags away from the waterways to a central drop zone would require quite an effort in addition to eventually taking the bags out to the South Jordan repository.
In some areas, Little Cottonwood Creek is still running high in places like Murray Park, but the city expects to clear those bags soon.
"We've had a lot of people calling and wanting to know how do we get rid of them," said Randy Wilden with Murray City Emergency Management. "(We're) encouraging them to leave them a week or two (just in case a big storm makes the water surge).
Unused bags could likely come in handy in the future, but only if they are stored indoors away from the sun, according to Anne von Weller, Murray deputy director of Public Services. She said the concern is keeping the bags and their contents from going into the waterways, eventually becoming debris that contaminates the water or gets in the way the next time flooding occurs.
"Once they get wet and (get) in the water, they don't deteriorate well and stay for a long, long time," Wilden said.
He said Murray has set up a sandbag drop-off area in the amphitheater parking lot of the park, and plans a volunteer clean-up date for July 30.
Salt Lake City has already removed sandbags from public areas and hauled them to an industrial landfill.
As for Salt Lake County, Baird said he would "like to see the same enthusiasm to clean up the sandbags that we had to put them out."
Email:jlee@ksl.com
